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You mean we only get Obsidian's legendary bug-free code, combined with a story that someone else is writing, based on a cartoon I stopped watching a few years ago?

I wield ye, mighty Mythbuster. Together, let us work wonders.

Today, the myth is that Obsidian games are buggy. This isn't true. It's more an unfortunate chain of events that lead to this myth.

- KoTOR II was unfinished due to it being rushed out of the door by a greedy publisher.

- NWN II had some multiplayer bugs due to it being somewhat rushed out the door, again, not Obsidian's fault. But nonetheless the single-player was bug free from start to finish. And I know, I played it on launch day. (It was, however, a very high-end engine. So it was Ultima VII all over again, and people bitching when their hardware wasn't up to the task.)

- Alpha Protocol was no more buggy than any AAA release these days.

- New Vegas was buggy, but that was largely due to Bethesda's Gamebryo engine. This is something that they worked to great lengths to fix up to some degree. There are even points in Obsidian's code where they sigh at the incompetence of Gamebryo, and I don't blame them. Regardless of this, New Vegas was nowhere near the buggy mess that Fallout 3 was at release.

- Dungeon Siege III, like Alpha Protocol, was built on their own engine and had next to no bugs. It was as bug free as any Valve game on its launch day, it was very polished.

There are popular developers out there that put out far, far buggier launch day games that I could name, but I won't. I don't want to start a flame war, here. I just had to clear this up, because this is utter nonsense. This is filed under 'should know better.'

Disagree? Go play Alpha Protocol and Dungeon Siege III.

It's very unfair to blame Obsidian for the mistakes of others.

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Originally Posted by Wizardry

NWN2 is mediocre while KotOR II is one of the worst I've ever played.

John's not an un-player, but I'm starting to think that you are, Wizardry. :P The only thing that could be considered mediocre about NWN2 is the mind of the person playing it.

---

Really, to hate on Obsidian games, you'd have to be completely and utterly devoid of any romance and/or wonder, you'd have to have a null void where your imagination is, and you'd be unable to be inspired by just about anything. You'd have to be what the most two-dimensional, stereotypical view of an accountant is to most people, and then even more boring than that.

An "Organising my sock drawer is the most exciting thing I do each day!" sort of person. Which is utterly depressing, but I know that there are people out there like that.

Obsidian games are designed to appeal to those who're pretty much the diametric opposite of that. Have a heart? Empathy, romance... wonder? You'll dig Obsidian! Care only about mechanics, and numbers, and moving little men around boards? You'll hate Obsidian. Such is the way of things.

John's not an un-player, but I'm starting to think that you are, Wizardry. :P The only thing that could be considered mediocre about NWN2 is the mind of the person playing it.

What? It's a D&D game that gets combat completely wrong. Just compare its implementation of 3.5E combat to Troika's Temple of Elemental Evil.

Originally Posted by Wulf

Really, to hate on Obsidian games, you'd have to be completely and utterly devoid of any romance and/or wonder, you'd have to have a null void where your imagination is, and you'd be unable to be inspired by just about anything. You'd have to be what the most two-dimensional, stereotypical view of an accountant is to most people, and then even more boring than that.

I lack imagination? Then explain to me why I regularly play CRPGs where characters are represented by a few dozen pixels.

The only thing that could be considered mediocre about NWN2 is the mind of the person playing it.

Of all the games to defend, NWN2? Seriously?

I played coop with a friend for about half the game, and we were both bored out of our minds. I know there's an extra campaign that everybody loves, but really, the main campaign in NWN2 is just awful. Poor writing, minimal challenge, and *so* much pointless backtracking.

It's hideously long, and there's absolutely no excuse for it. I thought you hated "padding".

Ok, I'm totally fucking confused by this move on Obsidian's part. I'm guessing that it's going to be a $15 downloadable title, and Obsidian are seeing it more as an opportunity to gain experience in this area of smaller, download-only games whilst taking basically no risks. It's a well-known property, THQ are publishing and someone else is writing it. So yeah, I think it's more about the experience than the money.

(I mean, just look at how well Double Fine have been doing in this area.)

And to let myself get dragged into the discussion about Obsidian in general, Dungeon Siege III was made on an in-house engine and was totally bug-free. It lacked a little something overall, but technically it was sound. Some odd design decisions basically rendered co-op pointless and/or un-fun, but I think it was exactly that - design decisions, not engine limitations.

KotOR II has one of the best characters in any RPG and a lot of the story elements are similar to Planescape: Torment. It's probably one of the best modern RPGs even despite its cut content.

Originally Posted by Wulf

- Alpha Protocol was no more buggy than any AAA release these days.

That's bollocks. Maybe it wasn't buggy for you, but for me it was a complete mess with animations not working, enemies spawning infinitely in the same spot I just killed one etc. I had lots of problems with it.

That's bollocks. Maybe it wasn't buggy for you, but for me it was a complete mess with animations not working, enemies spawning infinitely in the same spot I just killed one etc. I had lots of problems with it.

My experience with Alpha Protocol was that there were bugs, but they weren't too bad. Funnily enough, for me New Vegas was almost completely stable (only 1 crash in 50 hours I beleive), and far more stable than Fallout 3 GOTY with all the DLCs and all the patches that Bethesda were ever going to make, and yet NV got panned in the press for being horribly buggy and everyone largely ignored the bugs in reviews for F3.

I'd love to see Obsidian do an Elder Scrolls / Skyrim follow-up project, like they did with New Vegas and Fallout 3. But I'm pretty interested in this Wheel of Time game they are working on. I quit reading Wheel of Time after 5 books when it looked like the story was never going to get finished (thank god for Brandon Sanderson), but I love the old Unreal Wheel of Time game.

HEY GUYS I KNOW WHAT WOULD BE FUN LETS ARGUE ABOUT WHAT AN RPG IS AGAIN. Oh, wait, that'd be the opposite of fun.

Originally Posted by Wizardry

At least I try. None of you guys have even attempted a definition, nor have you guys found any holes in mine.

You said role-playing had nothing to do with role-playing games. No further comment.

Originally Posted by Wulf

Alpha Protocol was no more buggy than any AAA release these days.

No. Just no. I liked that game quite a bit, and it was and remains bugged well above average. It had glitchy animations, glitchy textures, broken scripting (to be fair, only a few times for me), and some plain ol' CTDs. Alpha Protocol is notably the one and only game which has not just killed itself, but forced my system into a hard reset. The ONLY piece of software that has ever done that to me, if you want to start trading personal anecdotes.

Originally Posted by TailSwallower

My experience with Alpha Protocol was that there were bugs, but they weren't too bad. Funnily enough, for me New Vegas was almost completely stable (only 1 crash in 50 hours I believe), and far more stable than Fallout 3 GOTY with all the DLCs and all the patches that Bethesda were ever going to make, and yet NV got panned in the press for being horribly buggy and everyone largely ignored the bugs in reviews for F3.

Yeah, and I do think some reviewers are guilty of letting their preconceptions show through, but I think consensus was NV is on par with Fallout 3 - which makes complete sense, given that it's, durr, the same engine. As for treatment of that fact in the "press"... That's what Wulf was getting at, that people have different expectations of different studios, except if it's possible to go one step beyond reasonable when making an argument, then he's one step beyond going one step beyond.

Really, to hate on Obsidian games, you'd have to be completely and utterly devoid of any romance and/or wonder, you'd have to have a null void where your imagination is, and you'd be unable to be inspired by just about anything. You'd have to be what the most two-dimensional, stereotypical view of an accountant is to most people, and then even more boring than that.

Gee, YOU don't have strong opinions about other people, do you know? Even Wizardry's not like that ;)

Now - wasn't there an OP? Ah, yes:
I guess it might not be terrible? South Park has its ups and downs; it's mostly been downs, in my estimation, but there are some real standout episodes. My first thought is that a full game - even the length that can get passed off as a light download-only title - is so much longer than an episode of the show that there isn't really a way for it to translate. And really, who picked Obsidian? The guys who are known better for plotting and writing work, and, hmm, they're not doing the writing on this one. The guys known for less than stellar stability are doing the coding? Nobody else was available and/or cheaper?

I can see a good Wheel of Time game being possible. Hell, unlike South Park the game would be a lot SHORTER than the books. Strip that story down by an order of magnitude and it could be pretty neat.